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In need of: "Idiot's Guide to Gimp"

Hello everyone.

Before I take a look at the tutorials for the third time, and struggle to follow their instructions, I'd like to post an example of my current skills with Gimp. Perhaps I will recollect on this and laugh at myself, or perhaps I will never find out how to use this program. I normally can figure out the base functions of things, but not with Gimp. If I discovered how to work this, I might enjoy it.

The weird looking things are trees, by the way. A dot is a village and a * is a city.

As you can see, I have learned how to:

1) Open the Program
2) Use the pencil tool
3) Insert a Background (the paper texture)

However, I know this program should allow me to do much more. What am I missing? I'd like to know how to change the size of the pencil tool*, change the color, and basically the simple stuff that should be obvious.

*I've found out how to change the size

The best maps are the ones we like the most after looking at the longest.

Actually one suggestion I have is to browse the internet for GIMP tutorials. And I mean any tutorial - not specifically map ones. Tutorials on how to make flaming text, or some random pattern, or a reflective sphere or whatever.

Even if you're not interested in the end product it doesn't really matter. The whole idea is to become familiar with the various features of GIMP and you'll usually come away knowing a few extra functions with every tutorial you do. This is pretty much how I learned to use photoshop.

I would start out by turning off single window mode (in the window tab), and arranging the different windows like this:

This is really more of a personal preference thing, but it will be easier to understand everything to start with if you arrange the layout like that.

If you need help doing that, you hit ctrl+b to bring up the toolbox (The menu pictured on the right), and to bring up the one on the left, go to the window tab, dockable dialogs, and hit layers. Once that pops up, hit the little arrow on the top right of the layers window facing the left, go to add tab, and add paint dyanamics, brushes, and gradients. You can do more if you like, but that should be all you need to start with.

Once you have that done, if you want, you can turn single window mode back on, and it should keep the same layout, but have everything in a single window. You can resize windows by hovering over their edge till a <-|-> icon appears, then click and drag in a direction to resize it. This can also be done in single window mode for the menus on the right and left.

Have you used other image editing programs before, other than MS paint? If not, then It'd be easier to work through everything with you via PMs, so I can go into more detail and we can have better back and forth.